Unseasonable
by Corisanna
Summary: Winter is Tōshirō's; his winter is stolen; winter returns corrupted but at least it returns; corruption fades into peace; he and his winter are bound; he and his winter are freed. A lyrical take on the last arc of the manga from Hitsugaya's POV.


A/N: I did a thing for the first 2019 Bleach Bing because I looked at the prompt ("Seasonal Changes") and a decent chunk of this sprung up in my skull immediately and wouldn't leave me alone until I threw it out "on paper."

* Reminder that Hitsugaya's bankai translates as "grand crimson lotus."

§ x § x §

 **Unseasonable**

Tōshirō's soul thrives in endless winter. He is grounded in permafrost, does not know breath without the delightful sting of cold in his chest, basks in moonlight glittering off sloping snowdrifts and trees bare of all but ice, flies with the twisting capriciousness of snowflakes. There is no exposed liquid in his Inner World, only ice and snow. When he is at peace, all is still and orderly save the light breeze and he can nudge aside snowdrifts to peek at the coldweather flowers he nurtures and insulates; he frequently wipes the snow from the sheet of ice protecting the lake where the lotus rhizomes that embody his dormant potential rest in bottomsilt, leans close and peers into the faintly-lit depths to check that they are still arranged _just so_. When he is restless, the wind whistles through austere tree branches and his soul echoes with the pattering of graupel bouncing on the ground ice; when he is upset, the graupel becomes ever larger hail and his soul howls with storm though his voice is silent. Even this is not uncomfortable to him; it is simply an aspect of his being. Hail suits his rage in particular; the greater his fury, the more formidable his hail. He remembers being fascinated by hailstorms as a child, by watching the bounce of light hail and the destructive force of heavy hail crushing delicate plants; fascinated by the rare hailstones bigger than his little fist that bruised those hit and occasionally crashed through rooftops; fascinated by how fleeting the sky's outpouring of fury was before easing off again. Hail suits his rage.

It is hailing in his soul when the Quincy invade Seireitei _en masse_. Some part of him whispers _wait_ but his sky has boomed with thunder and the hail is ringing in his ears. He calls the lotuses out of dormancy, calls the winter out of his soul to throw at the enemy as his passionate rage blooms, directs it to crush the enemy like summer foliage at the mercy of hailstones.

Tōshirō does not expect the enemy to _catch and keep_ his winter.

The cold is knocked out of him with the breath in his lungs; his next inhale is too warm, too dry, too _wrong_. He feels like he is sublimating, evaporating, like his soul is disappearing with the fading of the hail. The enemy dons his wintry wings and Tōshirō feels grounded in an entirely new and frightening way, pinions clipped, trapped on rapidly thawing earth. He calls out to his winter, grasps at it desperately, but it slips through his fingers with the slickness of partial melt. He feels the shocked disorientation of the sudden arrival of a hot summer that did not let spring have its turn, feels his lake ice shattered and his lotuses uprooted and spirited away with the water, feels the tender shoots of glory-of-the-snow and snowdrops and snowplants and crocuses and lichen exposed and withered even before the Captain-Commander's bankai drops on all of them like the murderous sun at midday in midsummer.

When the Quincy withdraw and his soldiers are settling into assigned tasks, Tōshirō finds a quiet room and retreats to his Inner World to assess the damage. It is too dry, too still. It is still chilly, but that exhilarating sting in his lungs is absent; his ribs feel achingly empty. His Inner World is the confusion of a winter assaulted by an unexpected heat wave that struck and retreated with dizzying speed. It is winter-yet-not; he is Tōshirō-yet-not. The topmost permafrost is thawing and he hates it, _he_ is thawing and he hates it. His delicate flowers are shriveled and wilting; his lake is more akin to a muddy pond and his precious lotus rhizomes are gone, gone, gone after he had _finally_ trained them into hardiness, into a widespread garden of sleeping power capable of blossoming into a lake of glorious crimson flowers on demand.

There is not enough cold wind to howl in his empty Inner World so Tōshirō has to howl himself. His voice is a poor substitute, thin and reedy compared to memories of thunderous hailstorms and the roars of a dragon. Everything about his soul is so obviously _lesser_ than it should be- even his voice.

Pathetic.

Every fiber of his being wants to drown himself in what is left of his lake, wants to just die because surely this is not living. He wades out into the mud, loses first his waraji and then his tabi in the sticky vacuum every step creates, mud stripping him of his footing and balance. He casts aside his haori where the new waterline is because surely he no longer deserves it, then trudges out to the center. The water he used to need to dive deep into to maintain his garden now only rises to his chest and is flat brown instead of the pristine turquoise it should be. He looks around his dying Inner World and thinks he would rather submerge his face forever than see its sorry state a moment longer.

But something gently brushes his foot in the muddy bottom.

Tōshirō blinks in surprise and looks down at the stagnant water, uncertain he had truly felt something until it happens again. He knits his brow and probes the silt with his toes until he finds something solid. Its shape is familiar; he excitedly holds his breath and plunges downward to find it, blindly scrabbling with desperate fingers. He breaks the surface triumphant, treasure in his hands. He gulps and gasps for air as he frantically examines it.

It is a single lotus rhizome. It was obviously torn from the substrate with a rough yank on its stems as they are frayed and sheared off unevenly. Many of the roots are broken as well, but the rhizome itself is intact and firm, tiny roots budding from the bottom and a little shoot curling up and away, striving for the surface; this tendril is what had touched him when he lost hope, this tiny remnant is what had weakly cried out for his care.

One lotus is still here- still alive.

All is not lost.

Tōshirō is sobbing before he knows it. He stands in the muddy water and cradles the rhizome to his heart and weeps over it in a confusing mess of grief and relief for a long time. He finally stops when there is movement in his hand; one of the budding roots has curled around his little finger and is reaching downward in search of soil.

His task is set before him with the crystalline clarity of a glacial lake. He closes his eyes for a moment, centers himself, and sets to work.

Calmer, he discovers that he can still call on ice. It is weak at first, an uncontrollable dribble, but he adjusts his grip and it _works_. He chills the swamp to slush and draws tiny ice crystals to him, separates them from the mud until he is chest-deep in pure graupel, gathers more and more and shoves the mud down and away from his center before letting all the ice thaw. He is left floating in a column of pristine water not quite twice as deep as he is tall; he dives to the bottom with his eyes open this time, tenderly anchors the lotus rhizome and thrills at the sight of its roots immediately grasping at the substrate, at its tendrils eagerly reaching upward. Those tendrils are spindly and the pool is far shallower than his soul is used to, but he should be able to work with this.

He _can_ work with this!

Tōshirō surfaces, levers himself out of the water, carefully ices over the pool to protect his lotus as it gets itself established, and surveys the lay of his land again. There is no breeze, but there is his breath. There is no dragon, but there is his heart. It is too dry, but there is still some moisture. It is too warm, but there is still some chill. The moon has waned to the faintest arc of a sliver Tōshirō has ever seen, but the moon is _still there_.

A sliver of his power is _still there_ , and _he can work with that._

So he sets his jaw in determination and tends his soul's wounds, separates pure ice from murky swamp and concentrates it around the pool to protect it, centralizes what permafrost he can to protect the ice, catalogs every speck of power available to him. He experiments with it, gets ideas, and absentmindedly dons his muddy haori before exiting his Inner World to seek his lieutenant and _plan_. Tenth is bleeding, but they still have an enemy to defeat.

Tōshirō may not be able to drop a glacier on the Quincy anymore, but an icicle to the heart could be just as deadly.

Things proceed well. They recover. They pull themselves together. Tenth grows as ready as they can be under the circumstances, taking heart in how their division's leadership refuses to falter. Between training his men, re-learning basic swordsmanship to better use his empty blade, and collaborating on new tactics with his lieutenant, Tōshirō tends his Inner World. The lotus is well-established and healthy, though delicate and lonely. The area of permafrost around the column of water has expanded; there are even icicles hanging from the branches of the closest trees.

Tōshirō is as ready as he can be without the full force of his winter.

He is soon forced to acknowledge that it is not enough.

The part of Tōshirō that is a strategist and tactician admits that sending a powerful fire-user against him after seeing how Yamamoto's bankai affected Hyōrinmaru is a brilliant move on the Quincy's part. His preparation may have held against the Quincy who had stolen his winter, especially considering his certainty that Hyōrinmaru would _never_ allow his ice to harm him, but the Quincy's counter-strategy is masterful.

That is one part of Tōshirō. The rest of Tōshirō is all raging despair.

His fury is patchy sleet instead of violent hail. He is thawing and he hates it. Swamp encroaches on his permafrost and the ice protecting his lotus melts. Mud dries and cracks and the pool begins to steam. The air scorches his lungs even before the fiery Quincy lances him through with a white-hot beam. He is dying without his winter, burned by the Quincy's flames, summer-autumn brushfire rushing across his scrubby plains. Too bright, too hot. He falls like a man in a desert, parched. Then the thief who stole his winter appears and taunts him with its glorious ice, holds it just out of reach like a mirage of oasis. Tōshirō's lone lotus wilts and he is too exhausted and dehydrated to shed tears for it.

Then Urahara's voice rings in his head and Urahara's invention appears innocently before him, just within reach. To Tōshirō, it looks like nothing so much as an impossibly black lotus seed; if he could just touch it, it would germinate and bloom and revitalize him, would restock his pond and call back winter. If he could _just_ \- _reach_ -

The brush of his fingertips against the seed thrills him with the first cold snap of autumn, a bitterly cold gust rushing through his soul and leaving frost in its wake. Icewater floods back into him through his fingers, makes him shiver in delight as the seed is absorbed, is firmly planted in the sludge-pit that had been his lake, as icewater rushes and gushes and fills that gaping hole with rapidly-blooming lotuses. The empty sky is suddenly home to his draconic winter silhouetted by an ominously full harvest moon low on the horizon. It is the most beautiful thing Tōshirō has ever seen. Its light casts wonderfully deep shadows filled with dark power. Tōshirō and his winter revel in the novelty of the darkness that reunited them, bind themselves together with it, and wear it on their face proudly. They descend on the thief with the furious blast of an early hard freeze, bitter frost destroying all the Quincy had not prepared for. Their united winter glory is magnificent.

However, that first freeze fades as suddenly as it had come, ephemeral frost evaporating from his skin as he slows. There are things Tōshirō should do to prepare for true winter, but he is so very tired and his winter is patient now that they are reunited and the lake and its swath of lotuses is restored. Messy and haphazard, but restored. There will be time to lay everything out neatly later. Winter is back and winter is long.

But something goes horribly wrong; winter comes, but not as it should.

The winter Tōshirō half-dreams is dry and uncomfortably mild. It is not true winter, but a sickly autumn going through the motions after an early frost. Tōshirō floats on his back in a clear space in his lake. He is disoriented and sleepy, feels ill and feverish and like his head is stuffed with cotton, wonders if what he feels is anesthesia from outside treatment for his injuries. It feels similar, but not. He is once again Tōshirō-yet-not. Everything feels uncomfortably _wrong_ and blighted though it _looks_ right. Well, except for the quality of light. There's a coppery tinge to everything and he thinks he tastes blood. He does not notice he is sinking until the lake freezes over him. It is familiar and surreal and wrong, so he weakly scrabbles at the ice. Arms and hands and fingers are suddenly so difficult to move, like whenever he wakes from surgery in Fourth Division and is filled with painkillers that make his mind disconnect from his body. Tōshirō pauses and looks at his arms in confusion; against the faintly glowing surface ice, he can see there are tendrils wrapped around his joints- knuckles, wrists, elbows. They are not lotus tendrils; they are dark red and growing down through the surface ice like roots seeking soil. He shifts uncomfortably and realizes they're all over him. This is the point where he should be panicking, but the drugged numbness makes emotion feel distant.

Tōshirō senses movement in the water, feels freezing pinpricks around his middle. His dragon is under the ice with him and has gently grasped him in icy jaws. Winter tugs him down carefully, pulls him this way and that trying to disentangle him from the net of tendrils that Tōshirō deliriously thinks look like disembodied blood vessels. Hyōrinmaru gradually manages to pull Tōshirō deeper, but the tendrils will not release him, will not break. He drifts in a dreamlike state and observes the veins curling around the stalks of the underwater lotuses. Hyōrinmaru eases him toward the bottom of the lake and steers for the well Tōshirō had created for the lone lotus he had salvaged during their separation. It is now the deepest point of their restored lake; speaking with each other is somehow impossible, but Tōshirō thinks his winter may be trying to hide him there to be protected with the lotus. Indeed, the dragon nudges him down into the deep grotto and curls up over its opening, shielding him with icy coils and folded wings.

Now that Hyōrinmaru is above him, Tōshirō can see that his winter is also ensnared in the baffling red tendrils. Fear rises within him and he can't bear to look. Instead, he floats facing downward because at least the invader hasn't pierced the depths to his core lotus. Tōshirō tries to focus on the plant's leaves as an anchor, trying to discipline his mind into something less vague- something that can fight. It works for awhile, though the red tendrils pulse and the water tastes of salt and iron and copper.

Suddenly, the veins constrict and yank Hyōrinmaru and Tōshirō upward. It is rough and painful and their lotuses are being forced to grow toward the surface too fast, too fast, the red vines shatter the ice on the surface of the lake and drag Tōshirō and Hyōrinmaru and brittle flowers into the sky, into the too-warm moonlight. The entirety of Tōshirō's Inner World is a mesh of slimy red rope. Some unseen entity pulls _just so_ , and Tōshirō and Hyōrinmaru are forced to dance in a macabre puppet show.

Something is wrong with his head, something is squirming and drilling in his ears, something is flashing visions of battle in his mind and rifling through his mind for if/then cause/effect need/ability and it _hurts_ and he can't stop it. The flashes he gets are horrifying; his blade and his ice cutting down allies at the command of a dark-haired Quincy girl. Hyōrinmaru is roaring and flailing like a dragonfly in a spider's web, unable to extricate himself; Tōshirō tries to wriggle out himself and also fails. They are in Hell together.

At least they _are_ together. But still.

Then Mayuri Kurotsuchi looms in his fugue state visions. Tōshirō's most coherent thought is _ah, he will end this even if it ends "me_." This is a relief. The information relayed to him by the tendrils in his ears becomes overwhelmingly confusing to the point of madness, which Tōshirō distantly thinks is only to be expected from battle with the mad scientist. Then some of the major veins go slack and his body outside plunges to the ground as he plunges toward the lake within. He sees flashes of a syringe approaching his neck and is relieved and _terrified_ at the same time.

Lightning strikes.

It begins with a bolt out of the blue that strikes his throat. His vision whites out and all he knows is agonized screaming as the charge courses through his body. He feels the tendrils in his ears vaporize and leave his mind reeling. His vision comes back in flashes; his Inner World is consumed in chaotic thundersnow as true winter roars back in to overtake false winter. White-hot lightning bolts strike intersections of veins and send electricity sizzling along the paths in every direction, burning them out like brush turned to kindling in a thunderstorm. Tōshirō falls into the lake and writhes and splashes on its surface, screaming screaming screaming, catching glimpses of his winter jerking in the sky as though seizing among the fireworks of portions of the vein-web exploding in sparks. They are seared from the inside out and Tōshirō finally, _finally_ loses consciousness.

Something startles him awake in the outside world; a hand slaps his face and an annoying voice demands attention. Tōshirō's eyes roll around in his head and finally focus on Kurotsuchi's leering, blurry face. Words stab his head but he doesn't understand; is something leaking out his ears?

...Smoke?

...His mind?

Kurotsuchi slaps him again. Tōshirō blinks. What. Oh, wait, words processing now.

"-Force you to recover so you can keep fighting the Quincy but there will be consequences," he barks.

Consequences. Consequences. What kind?

"If you'd rather die, tell me now before I waste my time, effort, and supplies on you."

They are possibly the kindest words Mayuri Kurotsuchi has ever said to him.

"Hurry up!" Kurotsuchi snaps. "I have Quincy to kill! I don't have time to coddle you!"

Tōshirō blinks in a daze, opens his mouth, has little control and no voice. Air scrapes in and out with a dry, pained rasp. Really, he is so exhausted and literally burnt out that death sounds comfortable, but he sees Kurotsuchi's lieutenant bent over his own lieutenant's writhing form. Matsumoto is alive. Her head rolls his way and he can tell that she sees him because her movements pause. He lolls his head on the ground and sees his winter's blade. It reminds him of all he has to protect. All is not lost. He must fight. So he wordlessly stretches clumsy fingers toward his blade.

"I'm going to take that as consent to repair you," Kurotsuchi says testily. He hauls Tōshirō up by the collar and shoves him into something that starts filling with liquid, the mystery substance rising above ankles, above knees. Kurotsuchi glares at him one more time before he shuts him in with his blade and sneers, "This will purify your soul and repair connections to your zanpakutō, but _what_ it connects to is _your_ responsibility. If you want to be functional, I _suggest_ you get to work."

Click. Darkness.

Tōshirō floats in shock for an indeterminate time, a lotus rhizome in winter dormancy. Then Hyōrinmaru gently pulls him into his Inner World.

True winter has returned, though the landscape looks storm-ravaged. Patchy clouds churn in the sky, but the moon is shining through properly. The sickly copper tint is gone. There are no more veins in the air, but there are shriveled remnants lying about like dead watermelon vines. He is sitting on an ice floe in the center of his lake, exhausted; he can tell at a glance that its surface is unstable, cracked into a jigsaw puzzle with thin ice at the shoreline. He instinctively knows his lotus garden is a mess far below. Hyōrinmaru descends from the heavens to coil around him tenderly; Tōshirō is absolutely unashamed to throw himself at the dragon's face and embrace it and cry. Hyōrinmaru is similarly distraught and relieved and traumatized, but they don't allow themselves to dwell on it for now- they'll have time for that later. Winter is back and winter is long.

There is much to be done.

They tend the landscape together as though tidying a garden after the first freeze of the season has killed off summer foliage. Tōshirō encases his fingers in claws of ice and snags dead veins out of trees, out of crevices in rocks, fishes them out of snow. Hyōrinmaru swims through their lake using his teeth to comb the water like a whale with baleen, occasionally surfacing to spit the dead veins and strangled lotus stems onto the pile Tōshirō began on the shore. They each take a moment here or there to watch the pile burn green and red and blue under the effect of whatever the hell Kurotsuchi is doing to them. It makes Tōshirō think of autumn leaf bonfires. The smoke is noxious and they are both certain the ground will be forever scarred black, but that is an acceptable price to pay for them. So they turn from the heap of smoldering refuse and descend into the lake together.

The lotus rhizomes are... well, they roughly approximate the pattern they should have, but it's skewed and asymmetrical- a rush job. Hyōrinmaru swims along the bottom and marks out the correct pattern with spires of ice. Tōshirō dives and gently moves rhizomes into alignment with nimble fingers. It is time-consuming, but they methodically rearrange their garden into a lotus mandala with the deep well at its center. After tentatively peeking at the outer world- still the darkness of whatever vessel Kurotsuchi had put him in- Tōshirō centers himself and floats on his back just above the grotto, gazing up at the play of moonlight through ice and water, watching it sparkle on dragon scales as his winter circles the lakebed radiating relief to be _home_. He seeks peace, even momentarily. He needs it. Hyōrinmaru needs it.

Then a change outside draws their attention; they look at each other for a long moment before Tōshirō nods and surfaces outside.

He does not recognize where he is, though the air feels different; like taking a senkaimon from a mountain in the northern hemisphere to a seashore in the southern hemisphere, an inversion of seasons and atmosphere that disorients him. He _does_ recognize that pitched battle has wrecked the deserted cityscape. Tōshirō realizes how dire things are when Hyōrinmaru stirs within and whispers with horrified reverence, _This is the Soul King's Realm_.

Well.

That was... bad.

Tōshirō first glances to his right, where he senses his lieutenant. She sways, but meets his eyes with determination. He nods and looks forward. Madarame and Ayasegawa are hauling their bloodied, unconscious captain into one of the vacated capsules. They pause to stare at Tōshirō when turning to fetch Kurotsuchi. Tōshirō closes his eyes at nightmarish flashes of cutting them down; he slightly bows his head in contrition, opens his eyes and meets theirs. He is impressed that they do not flinch, merely firm their faces and nod back before hauling Kurotsuchi past him. The mad scientist's body is a mangled mess and he is clutching a _human brain,_ of all things.

Best not to ask, really.

There is a blast of reiatsu in the distance. Tōshirō has a duty to fulfill- doubly so given his unwilling betrayal. So he only spares a moment to thank Kurotsuchi as he steps past the man and signals Matsumoto to follow him. The giant in the distance is an obvious target, the reiatsu of allies flashing around it like distress beacons.

Tōshirō and Matsumoto mutually and silently agree not to speak of what they had endured, not now, communicating strategy and orders in clipped voices as they cross rooftops toward the threat. He thinks he convinces Matsumoto stay hidden in reserve for joint tactics and to _get the hell away_ if she sees his bankai on its last petal, but he's never sure she'll obey an order that includes _don't protect your captain_.

She's powerful enough to not be overwhelmed by his immature bankai, but he doesn't want to risk exposing her to his full power. She is like a chrysanthemum that can withstand and even flower in his usual winter, yes, but his _complete_ bankai is the epitome of deep freeze and even the hardiest mums have their limits. He does not want to see his lieutenant blighted by his power.

Matsumoto seems to understand this. They part ways a safe distance from the enemy so she can follow covertly, but not before she gives him an impulsive hug. For once in his life, he fiercely returns it. Then he leaves her behind and approaches the enemy; true winter is come and there _will_ be frost.

§ x § x §


End file.
